An Annex group called TreesPlease raised enough money to hire two university students to survey their neighbourhood’s trees; they’re worried about what they found.

Daniela Tudor, right, measures the diameter of an old silver maple tree in the Annex as Johanne Von Zuben records the information. The duo are part of the Annex Residents' Association's TreesPlease group that is surveying the area's forest.

“Defoliation?” asks Johanne Von Zuben, tablet in hand, standing under a giant silver maple on the edge of a residential road.

“Maybe a one (good),” responds Daniela Tudor, the tree medical resident. (She’s in the fourth year of a PhD in forestry at the University of Toronto.)

“Poor branch attachment?”

“No conks, no rot, no cavities or cracks,” Tudor says, admiring the arc of rustle and creak above her. “This is a beautiful tree.”

They both work (Von Zuben for love, the doctor for pay) for TreesPlease, an Annex residents group working to improve the canopy of their neighbourhood. Before treatment you need a diagnosis, so they are examining every tree between Bathurst St. and Avenue Road, Bloor St. up to around Dupont Ave. — checking for signs of disease, weakness, age and potential threats.

They are showing their trees a little love and well-earned respect.

Oh, the trees, the glorious trees.

My grandmother lives on the 28th floor of an apartment building near St. Clair and Yonge. Stand on her balcony looking south, and you’ll see the city has pulled a mottled green quilt up over its knees.

The trees offer us shade during the panting heat and warmth on frigid nights. They fill our lungs with oxygen and keep our basements from flooding during storms.

They save us air conditioning bills and boost our house prices.

But love them for poetry, not economy.

Here, standing under this tree in the heart of the hectic city, I am in a placid forest. No car horns, just the whispering of leaves and a bird chirping high above.

Trees are like meditation classes. They make us calmer, kinder people. We need all the trees we can get.

The city talks about doubling the canopy by 2050. But, given one root-shrivelling day after another, plus the emerald ash borer and Mayor Ford’s penchant for cutting everything but the police budget, I’m not hopeful.

Plus, according to the city’s own statistics, three of every five trees in Toronto grow on private land.

This isn’t a bureaucratic issue then, it’s a personal one. What did Gandhi say? “Be the change you want to see.”

The Annex group decided to take matters into their own hands last year. A group of neighbourhood volunteers, they raised $15,000 — enough to hire two university students to survey the trees over the summer alongside volunteers, trained in tree surveying by University of Toronto Forestry professor Andy Kenney. This is summer two. They are almost halfway done.

So far, their diagnosis confirms their fears: More than a third of their trees are not in good shape.

They point to a photo of Spadina Ave. taken circa 1949. The road resembles a cathedral nave, two lines of leafy silver maples reaching their woody fingers across to one another.

Today, the same block of Spadina is a desert of unwelcoming concrete, not a bird in sight. Walk down its stretch at 2 p.m. on a July afternoon, and you’ll hate the traffic, the construction crews, the world.

“We need a proper plan in place to replace the trees,” says Michael Low, TreesPlease’s chair and chief tree lover. A pair of cardinals made a nest in the yellowy Mountain Ash behind his house and he’s been watching their baby grow over his morning coffee mug.

By the time they are finished, the volunteer group will have saved the city $60,000 as well as 6,800 hours of labour, mapping every potential site for a tree, and pointing out every problem tree in their neighbourhood.

Then, they are hoping the city’s forestry department will draft a neighbourhood tree plan for the Annex. It would be the city’s first.

Sit under a tree today and think about that.

Then, write a love poem.

Catherine Porter’s column usually runs on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. She can be reached at cporter@thestar.ca

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